Thursday, December 5, 2013

Can Your Diet Affect Your Life Insurance Premium?

Brought to You by AAMI

If you’re asking this question, you may want to think about why you are asking it. Do you worry that you are at risk for higher life insurance premiums due to what you eat? If you think your diet might affect the rates you get when you apply for life insurance, you might be happy to find out that diet doesn’t affect your life insurance premium per se.

However, your diet can affect your body in a number of ways, causing health issues that can affect your life insurance premium. Here are a few of the health issues that can be caused in part or in whole by diet that may affect the life insurance premiums you are eligible for:

Obesity

The impacts on a person’s health and life span for carrying excess weight can greatly affect the premium rate life insurance companies offered to applicants who fall into the category of obesity. The health issues associated with being obese are a huge risk to life insurance companies, so they charge much higher premiums for obese applicants. Luckily, though, many people are only a little overweight and not quite obese. Find out more at www.aami.com.au about your life insurance options today.

For applicants who are just a bit overweight, they can likely lock in lower premium rates, but they will have to make some minor adjustments to their lifestyle and show their life insurance company that they are making a noticeable effort to lose their excess weight. Eating a poor diet and overeating is one of the greatest causes of obesity and carrying excess weight. So, it is important to evaluate if you can change your diet to lose any extra weight your carrying to better your health and get a lower premium rate to obtain life insurance.

High Blood Pressure

High blood pressure can be caused by a number of factors, including smoking, drinking too much, genetics and obesity. This means that a poor diet can definitely put you at risk for high blood pressure, and, insurance companies see applicants with high blood pressure as more of a risk due to the risk of heart disease and other cardiovascular issues.
So, if you suffer from high blood pressure and want to get the best premium rate on life insurance you can get, you will want to evaluate your diet to see if you can make any changes to reduce your blood pressure rate.
Heavy Drinking
It might not always be considered a dietary choice, but heavy drinking can certainly affect your life insurance premium. If your consumption of alcoholic beverages goes beyond moderate levels, you will be at risk for health issues related to drinking alcohol.
Life insurance companies see this as a higher risk level than when people drink alcohol moderately or not at all and offer higher premiums for those who drink alcohol excessively. To reduce your risk for alcohol consumption related health problems and increase your eligibility for lower life insurance premium rates, you will want to make sure you are not drinking alcohol excessively.